[Tip] How to Restart Mozilla Firefox Without Losing Tabs
Many times we have opened multiple tabs in our web browser and we need to restart it. We might need to restart the browser to complete some add-on/extension installation or to apply some changes made by advanced configuration page. Or the browser might be running very slow or consuming high CPU resources.
There might be several reasons behind the need of restarting the browser. Yes, we can close the browser and then re-open it by clicking on its icon on Desktop or Start Menu but this way, we’ll lose all running tabs and windows. We’ll need to manually restore all previous tabs and windows using restore previous session option.
In such situations, we need a dedicated Restart button to restart our web browser without losing tabs.
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Today in this article, we’ll talk about the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser. In older versions, Firefox used to provide Developer Toolbar (GCLI) to quickly restart the browser as mentioned in following tutorial:
[Tip] How to Restart Mozilla Firefox With All Opened Tabs
Unfortunately the Developer Toolbar (GCLI) has been removed from newer Firefox versions so the above mentioned method no longer works in newer versions of Mozilla Firefox web browser.
Don’t worry! There are some other methods to quickly restart Firefox browser without losing running tabs. Today in this article, we’ll share 2 methods which will help you in restarting Firefox with all opened tabs. These methods will restart Firefox with all running tabs and will automatically restore all tabs at the launch.
Let’s share the methods to restart Mozilla Firefox without losing tabs:
METHOD 1: Using About:Profiles Page
Mozilla Firefox comes with this special page to manage user profiles in the browser. You can use this page to restart Firefox web browser.
1. Type about:profiles in Firefox address bar and press Enter. It’ll open About Profiles page.
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2. Now click on “Restart normally…” button to restart Firefox web browser.
It’ll close Firefox and re-open it with all running tabs and windows.
PS: You can also click on “Restart with Add-ons Disabled…” button to restart Firefox without any 3rd party add-ons/extensions. It’ll help you in troubleshooting issues in Firefox.
METHOD 2: Using About:RestartRequired Page
This is a secret page in Firefox browser which is used by Firefox to apply newly installed updates. We’ll directly launch this page to get an exclusive feature to restart Firefox browser.
1. Type about:restartrequired in Firefox address bar and press Enter. It’ll open Restart Required page.
The page shows following content:
Sorry. We just need to do one small thing to keep going.
We have just installed an update in the background. Click Restart Firefox to finish applying it.
We will restore all your pages, windows and tabs afterwards, so you can be on your way quickly.
2. Click on “Restart Firefox” button to restart Firefox browser.
It’ll exit the browser and re-launch it with all previously running tabs and windows.
PS: You can bookmark these pages for easy and quick access.
NOTE: If you are using Google Chrome, Opera or Microsoft Edge web browsers, check out following article:
[Tip] How to Restart Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Opera Without Losing Tabs
Good advice. Now if I could only overcome my fear of losing my Bookmarks toolbar by updating from version 63.03 to 64.02!
^^ You can backup bookmarks using bookmarks manager and then restore them after upgrade.
I used to use the Sessions App, but changes in Firefox caused it to no longer work. I tried several tab related AddOns but have not found anything that compares to the original.
I have been using the Restart Firefox App, which does the same as described by this article.
More often than needing to restart Firefox, I want to close all of the Firefox windows and their tabs, but will need the same windows and tabs the next time I do start Firefox. If I close Firefox windows, they will be forgotten the next time I restart Firefox; only the last remaining Firefox window is re-opened. A computer reboot will remember all the Firefox windows and their tabs the next time I start Firefox.
I have tried closing all from the Taskbar area, but that failed. It was some time ago that I tried that method, and now I have too many Windows and Tabs to gamble on it again.
What I need is a way to close Firefox without losing all those windows and their tabs the next time I need to start Firefox. How do I do that?
^^ You can use “Restore previous session” option in Firefox Options page.
>”You can use “Restore previous session” option in Firefox Options page”
That is possible in the regular Firefox, but not in the ESR branch, which I am using but did not mention. In fact, I have no assurance that switching to the regular Firefox would save all of the ESR branch Windows and Tabs.
Also, when setting up a Firefox account, Windows and Tabs are lost. Since the browser is still the ESR branch, Tab Session Manager had records of them, but I am not sure it would preserve the Windows and Tabs if I switched to the regular Firefox. Part of the reason for staying with the ESR branch are some extensions do not work in the regular Firefox, and that is one of the reasons the ESR branch does exist.
I updated my firefox to the last version 68.0.1 and lost all my 74 tabs, Onetab data, 650 bookmarks, history etc. I read several articles about restoring previous session but can’t find anywhere on my C-partition the files sessionstore.jsonlz24 and recovery.backlz4 in my C:\users\Appdata\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\…\sessionstore-backup because I have to copy :
sessionstore.jsonlz4 => sessionstore-backup.jsonlz4
recovery.backlz4 => recovery-backup.backlz4
previous.jsonlz4 => sessionstore.jsonlz4
to get the session back of my old upated firefox release.
Can you help me out with the new release please ?
^^ Check following:
https://www.askvg.com/fix-all-bookmarks-add-ons-and-settings-lost-in-mozilla-firefox/
Firefox today is so lame and not user friendly as it used to be. So, scenario for Firefox developers: User has many tabs open, then on some site there is a popup and popup goes into background. The user closes the browser with tabs and sees the popup. User opens the browser again and the tabs are gone. The user closes the browser window. User closes popup. User opens the browser again and no tabs anymore. It’s clearly a bug in functionality. It’s been going on like this for a long time and firefox is not doing a squat about.